On Saturday February 16th my brother-in-law, Donnie, and I traveled by car to LA, Lower Arkansas to find the home town and cemetery with the graves of the person I portray in Civil War Reenacting and his wife.

His name was Littleton C. Duke and he was in Company E, the Champaignolle (pronounced Shamp’ an noll) Guards of the 3rd Arkansas Infantry CSA.

My wife had to get up at 4:00AM to meet her hiking group that was trekking to North Central Arkansas for an 8 mile hike through the Ouachita (pronounced Washita) Mountains. So her brother, who was to accompany her, had spent the night with us so he didn’t have to drive in from his home town the morning of the hike to rendezvous with Nancy for the hike. Anyway I talked him into going with me instead. He had a hurt foot and it didn’t take much to recruit him for my adventure.

We left Little Rock, AR about 7:00AM and got some Egg McMuffins on the way to Champaignolle, which is about 15 miles northeast of El Dorado, AR, the home of a well-known oil company. El Dorado is in the South Central part of the State about 25 miles north of the Louisiana/Arkansas State Line. The travel distance was about 125 miles on State highways, which required we travel at the 55 MPH or get pulled over by a County Mountie.

Our journey started out well and we enjoyed the countryside of rolling hills, forested expanses on both sides of the road and swamplands with white egrets and loons.

Advertisements

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

About Civil War Reflections

Vernon has been a Civil War buff since childhood, but had been inactive in Civil War history for over two decades. However, in the early 1990s his interest was rekindled after watching Ken Burns’ “Civil War Documentary” on PBS. He particularly became interested in the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg) and decided to learn more about this epic struggle.